The Monitor's View:
“A survey released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center found more than four in 10 Mexicans are willing to leave their country to live in the US. One in five would risk a dangerous, illegal border crossing. Most surprising, one in three college graduates wants to flee. Before Washington takes up immigration reform this fall, it needs to take a hard look at Mexico's disillusionment.” ---- Christian Science Monitor

AMERICAN HAS
WITNESSED HOLDER AND OBAMA PROMISE OBAMA’S CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THEY WOULD
NEVER BE PROSECUTED.

OBAMA HOLDER
HAVE ALSO ENDLESSLY HARASSED AMERICAN STATES WITH LAWSUITS TO ADVANCE OBAMA’S
LA RAZA AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO ID TO VOTE, ENDLESS GRINGO-PAID
DREAM ACTS TO KEEP THE ILLEGALS CLIMBING OUR BORDERS AND JOBS.

WELLS FARGO,
ALONG WITH BANK of AMERICA, IS A MAJOR DONOR TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA
RAZA.

BOTH BANKS HAVE
OPENED BANK ACCOUNTS FOR ILLEGALS USING PHONY MEX CONSULATE IDS.

A SUBSTANTIAL
AMOUNT OF THE MONEY ILLEGALS DEPOSIT IS MEX GANG MONEY.

WELLS FARGO HAD
THEIR CALIFORNIA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED IN 2003. IT SILL IS. THE CRIMINAL
BANK SIMPLY DECLARED ITSELF ABOVE THE LAW AND WENT ON PERPETRATING THEIR
MORTGAGE SCAMS ON CONSUMERS NATIONWIDE UNTIL TAX PAYERS WERE FORCED TO BAILOUT
OUT ALL THE DAMAGES.

“The program of “gunwalking,”
as the tactic of permitting known buyers for the Mexican gangs to purchase
weapons and take them to Mexico, was part of a murky but undoubtedly
reactionary effort by the US government to develop relations with the drug
cartels, some of which deposited huge sums in American banks, to the benefit of
Wall Street.”

US House votes contempt citation for
attorney general

By Patrick Martin
30 June 2012

The
Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to find Democratic
Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress Thursday, the first time
in US history that such a sanction has been applied to the top US law
enforcement official.

The
vote came on a near-party-line vote of 255 to 67, with 108 Democrats
abstaining. The majority of Democrats walked out of the Capitol during the
voting in order to make a show of outrage over the contempt citation. The
action is not expected to have any practical effect, since the House of
Representatives will now request the US Attorney for Washington DC, who is
Holder’s subordinate, to bring charges against his own boss, and he is likely
to refuse.

The
contempt citation is purportedly the outcome of a protracted congressional
investigation into “Fast and Furious,” an abortive effort by the Phoenix office
of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ostensibly to gather
intelligence on Mexican drug cartels. The ATF allowed gang representatives to
buy weapons at American gun shops and then bring them across the Rio Grande
into Mexico.

The
operation was first initiated under the Bush administration, under the codename
“Wide Receiver,” but was shut down in 2007. It was revived after Obama and
Holder took office, under its new name, although it is not clear whether the
White House or senior Justice Department officials were aware of it.

In
December 2010, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot to death in a gun
battle in which several “Fast and Furious” weapons were involved. The program
was abruptly shut down, and top Justice Department officials initially denied
its existence in a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress that was later
retracted.

The
House Governmental Operations committee, headed by California Republican
Darrell Issa, has focused its investigation not on the “Fast and Furious”
program itself, but on efforts to prove that top Justice Department officials
lied about the program in the course of a series of responses to the committee
in 2011.

Each
request from Issa’s committee for documents has been followed by further
requests for internal emails about the Justice Department’s response to the
previous document requests, in an evident effort to construct and trigger a
perjury trap that would implicate either Holder or one of his top subordinates
in a purported cover-up.

“Fast
and Furious” does involve serious issues relating to the secret operations of
the federal government. The program of
“gunwalking,” as the tactic of permitting known buyers for the Mexican gangs to
purchase weapons and take them to Mexico, was part of a murky but undoubtedly
reactionary effort by the US government to develop relations with the drug
cartels, some of which deposited huge sums in American banks, to the benefit of
Wall Street. It is likely for this reason that even some Republican
Senators have sought to distance themselves from Issa’s campaign—this is not
the sort of program that is supposed to see the light of day.

The
House Republicans, in fact, are uninterested in exposing either the US
manipulation of the drug gangs or the criminal activities of Wall Street. The
Justice Department has supplied the committee with the documents related to the
origins and functioning of the “Fast and Furious” program. The subpoena
rejected by Holder, which triggered a claim of executive privilege by Obama,
involves 1,500 pages of internal emails between top Justice Department
officials written only after “Fast and Furious” had been shut down.

A
driving force in the campaign over “Fast and Furious” vote is the National
Rifle Association, the ultra-right group that purports to represent gun owners.
Top NRA officials claim that top Obama administration officials devised “Fast
and Furious” in order to produce a series of bloody incidents along the border
involving guns purchased at US gun shops. The purpose of this alleged
conspiracy was to generate political propaganda for sweeping restrictions on
gun ownership that the Obama administration supposedly plans to introduce in
its second term.

Some
17 House Democrats decided to follow the dictates of the NRA and vote for the
contempt citation against Holder, in an effort to win the backing of the
right-wing group in the upcoming congressional elections. Only two Republicans
voted against the contempt citation.

What
is remarkable in the conflict is that there are ample reasons for indicting
Attorney General Holder for criminal actions against the democratic rights of
the American people, but these are of no interest to the ultra-right groups
spearheading the campaign over “Fast and Furious.”

Holder
has been one of the most aggressive spokesmen for the claims of the Obama
administration of presidential power to order the assassination of American citizens,
or to detain them indefinitely without charge or judicial review, in the name
of the “war on terror.” The Justice Department has spearheaded a series of
prosecutions of whistleblowers who have leaked information on anti-democratic
operations of the military-intelligence apparatus within the United States.

THE
LA RAZA DEMS HAVE SABOTAGED E-VERIFY TO HELP EASE MORE ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS.
IN MEX-OCCUPIED CA, THE LA RAZA (ILLEGALS) CONTROLLED STATE LEGISLATURE PASSED
A LAW MAKING IT ILLEGAL FOR EMPLOYERS TO USE E-VERIFY. OBAMA HAS SUED AZ TO
STOP E-VERIFY…. HERE’S WHY:

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs
taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of
Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on
the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should
support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they
need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”

“The principal beneficiaries of our current
immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard
wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American
workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant
flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.”Christian Science Monitor

*

“Listen to people
from the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, CARECEN, Latino TV networks, the
Piolin radio show (that’s Hispanic anti-Rush Limbaugh), and you will see that
the U.S. is replete with its own Chavezes-in-waiting.”

In the hours following the Supreme Court's decision to ratify ObamaCare, Mitt Romney got $4.6 million in donations from 47,000 individuals. The tide is with him. The Supremes are a game changer.But Romney has to make the case. He needs to link the anemic jobs and economic situation to the ObamaCare tax, spend and regulate fiscal drag. And he has to add to that mix the dangers to our freedoms embodied in Justice John Roberts' expansion of the power to tax our personal behavior.
Scott Rasmussen says the idea of ObamaCare repeal has held steady at around 54% ever since its passage in March 2010. This reveals the dynamic political opportunity that Gov. Romney has.
Again, it's a three-pronged attack: The anemic economy, the ObamaCare costs that are stifling the economy and the John Roberts expanded power of taxation that will bring us more mandates, more entitlements and less personal freedom, all of which will further cripple the economy.
One way of looking at Roberts' sleight-of-hand decision to vote in favor of ObamaCare is that a tax is a tax is a tax. As a non-lawyer, I see the Roberts vote as a massive expansion of federal government taxing power — just what we don't need.
Supply-siders like me argue that when you tax something you get less of it. With Judge Roberts throwing in with the liberals on the court to expand federal tax powers, we now face the massive threat of ultra-slow economic growth in the U.S. for years to come.
The Roberts Court has served up a "tax mandate" that is more powerful than the still-limited Commerce Clause regulatory mandate. Roberts has created a huge new loophole. Instead of new purchase mandates, we'll have new purchase tax mandates.
This expanded tax power could force me to eat broccoli if the government so chooses, or make me put solar panels on my home. Gov. Bobby Jindal now worries about the people who "refuse to eat tofu or refuse to drive a Chevy Volt." Not because of the Commerce Clause, but because of the new tax-mandate clause. You'll be taxed heavily if you don't do what the government wants you to do.
And don't we have enough taxes already in this country? And what about the tax threats that are coming down the road?
Repealing the Bush tax cuts and adding on the ObamaCare tax hikes will produce outrageous marginal tax rates of roughly 45% for successful earners, dividend investors and small-business owners. In other words, European-style taxes, which suggests anemic European-style growth.
Americans for Tax Reform estimates that ObamaCare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses. Investor's Business Daily says this comes to a $675 billion tax hike over the next decade. Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal editorial board cites CBO estimates that roughly 8 million (or 76% of) middle-class taxpayers earning less than $120,000 a year will shoulder the new Obama-Care tax mandate authorized by Judge Roberts.
And this whole panoply of ObamaCare taxes is already one big drag on the economy. Just in recent days, revised GDP came in at 1.9%, and real consumer spending was essentially flat. Job growth has slowed markedly, as have new factory orders. Economists on Wall Street are looking for only 2% growth this year. The Fed is so worried about the economy it might launch another counterproductive quantitative easing.
Meanwhile, health care premiums are going up, not down. Mandated one-size-fits-all health services and insurance will incentivize businesses to pay the fine and push employees into the state's exchange system. And this will drive up the subsidized entitlement even more.
The CBO now estimates that ObamaCare spending will hit $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. That's a number that started out at only half as much. But that's what happens when you install European-style entitlements. You threaten to bankrupt the nation's finances. Or you threaten to literally tax us into perpetual subpar growth and high unemployment.
And that's the case Mitt Romney has to make. But he has to hammer away, day by day. He needs to make these points if we're to end the malaise.

Shame about all those earlier
deportations, the ones the administration was boasting about until recently.
The decision looks nakedly political. You can hardly claim to be standing on
principle when you're driven entirely by tactical calculation.

Out and out lawlessness, Charles
Krauthammer called the decision. America is supposed to be a nation of
laws.

Obama's Immigration Maneuver

By Clive Crook

I welcome Obama's
decision on immigration. Pursuing and deporting illegal immigrants who were
brought to this country as children is inhumane. If the US stands for
something, it should never sink so low.

Out and out lawlessness, Charles
Krauthammer called the decision. America is supposed to be a nation of
laws. Yes, when it chooses to be. A settled, intelligent and indisputably
legitimate immigration policy is needed. But there's no sign of it. In the
meantime, resorting to a legal maneuver that lets the administration leave a
cruel law unenforced is the best that can be done, and in my view much the
lesser evil.

It would be nice to call it a brave decision, but the timing tempers one's
enthusiasm. What took him so long? Oh yes, there's an election coming up, and
the Latino vote could be pivotal. Shame
about all those earlier deportations, the ones the administration was boasting
about until recently. The decision looks nakedly political. You can hardly
claim to be standing on principle when you're driven entirely by tactical
calculation.

Since it's the right decision I hope it pays off. A new Bloomberg
poll suggests it might. But perhaps the administration is taking more of a
chance than it knows. Sean
Trende thinks the electoral calculation may backfire for three main
reasons. Latinos aren't concentrated in important swing states. (Florida?
Latinos in Florida don't vote like Latinos elsewhere.) White working-class
voters are likely to be offended by the decision. And Latinos might not care
about immigration policy quite as much as Democrats are apt to think.

[J]ust as there's a ceiling on the Republican share of this
vote, there's probably something of a floor. (Harry Enten provides some good
analysis here.)

I'd just add that in 2008, only 69 percent of Latino voters described
illegal immigration as "very" or "extremely" important to
them in exit polls. Of these, nearly one-third voted Republican, suggesting
that a near-majority of Latinos either thought that illegal immigration wasn't
an important issue, or thought it was and voted Republican anyway...

In short, it's not really clear what Obama's tack on immigration really
accomplishes, politically speaking. It probably will result in minimal gains
among Latino voters, in states with only a few electoral votes. But what it
costs him could easily offset those gains, and then some.

Is it possible Obama did the right thing, even suspecting it
might cost him in electoral terms? These days, sad to say, that's hard to
believe.

AMERICAN HAS
WITNESSED HOLDER AND OBAMA PROMISE OBAMA’S CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THEY WOULD
NEVER BE PROSECUTED.

OBAMA HOLDER
HAVE ALSO ENDLESSLY HARASSED AMERICAN STATES WITH LAWSUITS TO ADVANCE OBAMA’S
LA RAZA AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO ID TO VOTE, ENDLESS GRINGO-PAID
DREAM ACTS TO KEEP THE ILLEGALS CLIMBING OUR BORDERS AND JOBS.

WELLS FARGO,
ALONG WITH BANK of AMERICA, IS A MAJOR DONOR TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA
RAZA.

BOTH BANKS HAVE
OPENED BANK ACCOUNTS FOR ILLEGALS USING PHONY MEX CONSULATE IDS.

A SUBSTANTIAL
AMOUNT OF THE MONEY ILLEGALS DEPOSIT IS MEX GANG MONEY.

WELLS FARGO HAD
THEIR CALIFORNIA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED IN 2003. IT SILL IS. THE CRIMINAL
BANK SIMPLY DECLARED ITSELF ABOVE THE LAW AND WENT ON PERPETRATING THEIR
MORTGAGE SCAMS ON CONSUMERS NATIONWIDE UNTIL TAX PAYERS WERE FORCED TO BAILOUT
OUT ALL THE DAMAGES.

“The program of “gunwalking,”
as the tactic of permitting known buyers for the Mexican gangs to purchase
weapons and take them to Mexico, was part of a murky but undoubtedly
reactionary effort by the US government to develop relations with the drug
cartels, some of which deposited huge sums in American banks, to the benefit of
Wall Street.”

US House votes contempt citation for
attorney general

By Patrick Martin
30 June 2012

The
Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to find Democratic
Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress Thursday, the first time
in US history that such a sanction has been applied to the top US law
enforcement official.

The
vote came on a near-party-line vote of 255 to 67, with 108 Democrats
abstaining. The majority of Democrats walked out of the Capitol during the
voting in order to make a show of outrage over the contempt citation. The
action is not expected to have any practical effect, since the House of
Representatives will now request the US Attorney for Washington DC, who is
Holder’s subordinate, to bring charges against his own boss, and he is likely
to refuse.

The
contempt citation is purportedly the outcome of a protracted congressional
investigation into “Fast and Furious,” an abortive effort by the Phoenix office
of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ostensibly to gather
intelligence on Mexican drug cartels. The ATF allowed gang representatives to
buy weapons at American gun shops and then bring them across the Rio Grande
into Mexico.

The
operation was first initiated under the Bush administration, under the codename
“Wide Receiver,” but was shut down in 2007. It was revived after Obama and
Holder took office, under its new name, although it is not clear whether the
White House or senior Justice Department officials were aware of it.

In
December 2010, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot to death in a gun
battle in which several “Fast and Furious” weapons were involved. The program
was abruptly shut down, and top Justice Department officials initially denied
its existence in a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress that was later
retracted.

The
House Governmental Operations committee, headed by California Republican
Darrell Issa, has focused its investigation not on the “Fast and Furious”
program itself, but on efforts to prove that top Justice Department officials
lied about the program in the course of a series of responses to the committee
in 2011.

Each
request from Issa’s committee for documents has been followed by further
requests for internal emails about the Justice Department’s response to the
previous document requests, in an evident effort to construct and trigger a
perjury trap that would implicate either Holder or one of his top subordinates
in a purported cover-up.

“Fast
and Furious” does involve serious issues relating to the secret operations of
the federal government. The program of
“gunwalking,” as the tactic of permitting known buyers for the Mexican gangs to
purchase weapons and take them to Mexico, was part of a murky but undoubtedly
reactionary effort by the US government to develop relations with the drug
cartels, some of which deposited huge sums in American banks, to the benefit of
Wall Street. It is likely for this reason that even some Republican
Senators have sought to distance themselves from Issa’s campaign—this is not
the sort of program that is supposed to see the light of day.

The
House Republicans, in fact, are uninterested in exposing either the US
manipulation of the drug gangs or the criminal activities of Wall Street. The
Justice Department has supplied the committee with the documents related to the
origins and functioning of the “Fast and Furious” program. The subpoena
rejected by Holder, which triggered a claim of executive privilege by Obama,
involves 1,500 pages of internal emails between top Justice Department
officials written only after “Fast and Furious” had been shut down.

A
driving force in the campaign over “Fast and Furious” vote is the National
Rifle Association, the ultra-right group that purports to represent gun owners.
Top NRA officials claim that top Obama administration officials devised “Fast
and Furious” in order to produce a series of bloody incidents along the border
involving guns purchased at US gun shops. The purpose of this alleged
conspiracy was to generate political propaganda for sweeping restrictions on
gun ownership that the Obama administration supposedly plans to introduce in
its second term.

Some
17 House Democrats decided to follow the dictates of the NRA and vote for the
contempt citation against Holder, in an effort to win the backing of the
right-wing group in the upcoming congressional elections. Only two Republicans
voted against the contempt citation.

What
is remarkable in the conflict is that there are ample reasons for indicting
Attorney General Holder for criminal actions against the democratic rights of
the American people, but these are of no interest to the ultra-right groups
spearheading the campaign over “Fast and Furious.”

Holder
has been one of the most aggressive spokesmen for the claims of the Obama
administration of presidential power to order the assassination of American
citizens, or to detain them indefinitely without charge or judicial review, in
the name of the “war on terror.” The Justice Department has spearheaded a
series of prosecutions of whistleblowers who have leaked information on
anti-democratic operations of the military-intelligence apparatus within the
United States.

The Supreme Court ruling on Obama’s health care overhaul

30 June 2012

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was voted into law in March 2010, President Barack Obama hailed the measure as a vindication of the “American dream” and proof that “government of the people and by the people still works for the people.”

Thursday’s ruling by the US Supreme Court upholding key provisions of the law met with a similar response from the president, Democratic supporters of the bill and what passes for the liberal media in the US. The basic premise of their celebration of the high court decision was that the health care law is a genuine reform that will expand coverage for ordinary Americans and implement safeguards to guarantee quality care. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The law constitutes a sweeping attack on health care for tens of millions of working people. Its principal aim is not to provide universal health coverage—millions will remain uninsured under its provisions—but rather to reduce costs for corporations and the government, in large part by rationing care for all but the wealthy. The Supreme Court ruling upholding the law, moreover, is itself a deeply reactionary decision with far-reaching implications for the social and democratic rights of the American people.

The health care legislation was crafted to serve the interests of the private insurers, pharmaceutical firms and giant health care chains. They stand to profit handsomely from its provisions.

The centerpiece of the law, the so-called individual mandate, which was upheld by the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, will require all but the very poorest individuals to obtain health insurance from private companies or pay a penalty. This will funnel tens of millions of new cash-paying customers to the private insurance companies.

• A tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans held by unionized and other employees.

While individuals can be fined by up to 2 percent of their income if they do not have coverage, the fines for employers who fail to offer insurance to their employees are so low as to create an incentive for companies to drop their insurance programs. That will force workers to buy individual policies offering reduced coverage. One recent study showed that as many as 9 percent of businesses plan to drop coverage for their employees by 2014.

The fact that such a regressive measure is passed off as a progressive reform says a great deal about 21st century America, as does the Supreme Court ruling that upheld it. The decision—written by the right-wing chief justice, John Roberts, and endorsed by the four nominal liberals on the court—reflects the fact that the corporate establishment is heavily invested in the legislation.

Justice Roberts joined with the other right-wing justices to reject the Obama administration’s argument that the health care law, and its requirement that every person obtain health insurance, was constitutional on the basis of the government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce (according to the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution). Roberts instead based his ruling upholding the individual mandate on the government’s taxation powers, equating the penalty for those who do not purchase insurance to a tax.

The rejection of the Commerce Clause as the basis for federal social legislation is the culmination of an expanding right-wing attack on what had, ever since the New Deal of the 1930s, been regarded as a settled matter of constitutional jurisprudence. Congress had cited the Commerce Clause as the constitutional foundation for reforms such as the minimum wage, child labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and civil rights legislation, as well as regulations on the activities of corporations. The aim of all five right-wingers on the court, including Roberts, was to set a legal precedent weakening the power of Congress to legislate any social reforms or limitations on corporate profit-making.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized Roberts’ “rigid reading” of the Commerce Clause as “stunningly retrogressive.” She noted that it harkened back to the early part of the last century, when the Supreme Court routinely overturned social reform legislation and laws regulating corporate activities.

The one provision of the health care law that was rejected by the court was a measure related to the expansion of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor jointly administered by the states and the federal government. The law sought to cover an estimated 11 million people by extending Medicaid coverage to all individuals under the age of 65 with incomes at 133 percent of the poverty level or less.

It empowered the federal government to withhold Medicaid funding from any state that refused to implement this expansion. Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling stripped that power from the federal government, making the expansion of Medicaid by the individual states, as a practical matter, optional.

What the Supreme Court and the ruling elite as a whole have in their sights is not only Medicaid, but the entire framework of social programs such as Social Security, Medicare and food stamps, as well as laws upholding democratic rights such as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

Passage of the Obama health care legislation in 2010 ushered in a new stage in the assault on the working class. Austerity measures have been implemented across the country, with states implementing deep cuts to Medicaid and other social programs. In the midst of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, the White House and Congress made a deal to reduce the duration of unemployment benefits.

The Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court ruling upholding it underscore the incompatibility of private ownership of the means of production and production for profit with basic social needs such as health care. There is no possibility of achieving genuinely progressive social change within the framework of the capitalist economic and political system.

Universal, quality health care requires taking profit out of the provision of medical care and placing the health care system on socialist foundations. The insurance firms, pharmaceutical companies and health care chains must be nationalized and transformed into public utilities under the democratic control of the working people.

The Socialist Equality Party and its candidates in the 2012 elections, Jerry White for president and Phyllis Scherrer for vice president, are committed to the fight for high-quality, universal health care as a basic social right of the working class. Visit the Socialist Equality Party campaign website.

In the hours following the Supreme Court's decision to ratify ObamaCare, Mitt Romney got $4.6 million in donations from 47,000 individuals. The tide is with him. The Supremes are a game changer.
But Romney has to make the case. He needs to link the anemic jobs and economic situation to the ObamaCare tax, spend and regulate fiscal drag. And he has to add to that mix the dangers to our freedoms embodied in Justice John Roberts' expansion of the power to tax our personal behavior.
Scott Rasmussen says the idea of ObamaCare repeal has held steady at around 54% ever since its passage in March 2010. This reveals the dynamic political opportunity that Gov. Romney has.
Again, it's a three-pronged attack: The anemic economy, the ObamaCare costs that are stifling the economy and the John Roberts expanded power of taxation that will bring us more mandates, more entitlements and less personal freedom, all of which will further cripple the economy.
One way of looking at Roberts' sleight-of-hand decision to vote in favor of ObamaCare is that a tax is a tax is a tax. As a non-lawyer, I see the Roberts vote as a massive expansion of federal government taxing power — just what we don't need.
Supply-siders like me argue that when you tax something you get less of it. With Judge Roberts throwing in with the liberals on the court to expand federal tax powers, we now face the massive threat of ultra-slow economic growth in the U.S. for years to come.
The Roberts Court has served up a "tax mandate" that is more powerful than the still-limited Commerce Clause regulatory mandate. Roberts has created a huge new loophole. Instead of new purchase mandates, we'll have new purchase tax mandates.
This expanded tax power could force me to eat broccoli if the government so chooses, or make me put solar panels on my home. Gov. Bobby Jindal now worries about the people who "refuse to eat tofu or refuse to drive a Chevy Volt." Not because of the Commerce Clause, but because of the new tax-mandate clause. You'll be taxed heavily if you don't do what the government wants you to do.
And don't we have enough taxes already in this country? And what about the tax threats that are coming down the road?
Repealing the Bush tax cuts and adding on the ObamaCare tax hikes will produce outrageous marginal tax rates of roughly 45% for successful earners, dividend investors and small-business owners. In other words, European-style taxes, which suggests anemic European-style growth.
Americans for Tax Reform estimates that ObamaCare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses. Investor's Business Daily says this comes to a $675 billion tax hike over the next decade. Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal editorial board cites CBO estimates that roughly 8 million (or 76% of) middle-class taxpayers earning less than $120,000 a year will shoulder the new Obama-Care tax mandate authorized by Judge Roberts.
And this whole panoply of ObamaCare taxes is already one big drag on the economy. Just in recent days, revised GDP came in at 1.9%, and real consumer spending was essentially flat. Job growth has slowed markedly, as have new factory orders. Economists on Wall Street are looking for only 2% growth this year. The Fed is so worried about the economy it might launch another counterproductive quantitative easing.
Meanwhile, health care premiums are going up, not down. Mandated one-size-fits-all health services and insurance will incentivize businesses to pay the fine and push employees into the state's exchange system. And this will drive up the subsidized entitlement even more.
The CBO now estimates that ObamaCare spending will hit $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. That's a number that started out at only half as much. But that's what happens when you install European-style entitlements. You threaten to bankrupt the nation's finances. Or you threaten to literally tax us into perpetual subpar growth and high unemployment.
And that's the case Mitt Romney has to make. But he has to hammer away, day by day. He needs to make these points if we're to end the malaise.